


monsters are always hungry, darling

by ghostrees



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Canon Compliant, Canon typical body horror, CanonTypical Jon and Martin having terrible self esteem, Fix-It of Sorts, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, and an overuse of tea as a metaphor, but no worse than the podcast itself, for like the next day and a half lol, if you want heavy introspection, some Messed Up depictions of violence disease and gore, the major character death is about Daisy, there is a brief offhand mention of death by alcoholism, this is the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23402374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostrees/pseuds/ghostrees
Summary: When the days get particularly bad, Martin takes to imagining himself making a cup of tea.Martin, the apocalypse, and many cups of tea.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 25
Kudos: 86





	monsters are always hungry, darling

**Author's Note:**

> I had about a quarter of this written, and then the trailer came out and I thought, wow, this fic is even more appropriate now! Better finish it before the actual start of season five makes things sadder than I ever could.
> 
> I don't know if this is good. I don't know if the tone is consistent. I do know that I've been staring at this google doc for days and if I don't post it I'll just keep staring at it. 
> 
> Title is, of course, from the ever incredible Richard Siken.

When the days get particularly bad, Martin takes to imagining himself making a cup of tea.

In his mind he goes through the familiar motions — filling the kettle, waiting for it to boil, waiting another minute after the water reaches the boiling point because tea always tastes better that way. There the scene diverges depending on the day, moving along different well known paths, direction determined by whoever the imaginary tea is for. The type, how long he allows it to steep for, the amounts of milk and sugar. Each little preference that he remembers snatches a piece of normalcy back for him. In the absence of the physical items required to actually care for people, here at the end of the world, this is the best he can do.

Martin makes a lot of cups of tea this way. Sometimes he even finds it in himself to be grateful that he has been lucky enough to have so many peoples’ preferences memorized. Sometimes that is enough.

* * *

They’re moving south, holding on to vague hopes of being able to find Basira, of making a plan to stop this, to _fix_ this, to end Jonah Magnus once and for all. It’s slow going. Not only are there the unending eldritch horrors to contend with, each day playing out like a statement on top of a statement, but then there’s Jon. Jon, who wears a blindfold now because seeing and Seeing at the same time is too much, and there’s only one they have any real control over. Jon who is both more powerful and more fragile than Martin has ever seen him before. Jon who pushed back the tide of knowledge that threatened to drown him, who is still so human despite the faint glow that doesn’t fade from his eyes. Jon who has not forgiven himself.

(They’d tried, in that first week, to destroy Jon’s eyes. Jon had insisted, begged Martin to try and remove them in the hopes that it might have some effect on the state of the world. That it might at the very least help curb the tide of knowledge pouring into his mind at all times. Martin hadn’t wanted to agree, too afraid of the possible cost, only giving in when it became apparent that if he didn’t help Jon would try and do it by himself. It didn't matter, of course. The knife would barely begin to approach Jon’s face before it was thrown out of Martin’s hand by some invisible force. He’d held Jon as he cried, and that is when he’d first formed a blindfold out of a scrap of the softest blanket they had and tied it as gently as he could over Jon’s eyes.)

At night, curled up into each other in the sleeping bag they’d grabbed from Daisy’s safehouse before they finally had to flee from it, they fall into fractured periods of rest. It’s never quite close enough, any space between them an affront to the desperate need Martin feels to hold and be held by Jon. But when Jon’s hands dig into the blindfold covering his eyes, scratching and clawing at the skin around them, as if by hurting himself he could end all this, Martin’s hands are there too. He used to feel that his hands were too big, too easy to fumble things with, too inelegant. But now, when Martin covers both of Jon’s in his, pulling him in impossibly closer, saying anything he can think of to keep Jon there with him, he is glad that these hands are his. 

* * *

Martin had always thought that for such an easygoing guy, Tim’s tea preferences were needlessly, ridiculously complicated. 

Earl Grey, but not any plain Earl Grey, no simple Tetley’s, but instead the special one with the extra bergamont that was only sold at the little market twenty minute walk from the Institute while everyone else’s tea’s could be purchased at the local. Then it was exactly one and a half cap-fulls of milk, a sickening six spoonfuls of sugar, and the tea steeped for exactly four minutes _after_ the sugar had been added, for it to be perfect.

Martin, of course had never complained about it. He’d rolled his eyes a few times, but never ventured more than that. Now he knows that a teasing comment on its complexity, on how it was more sugar sludge than tea, on how it was an abomination to people with functioning taste buds everywhere would likely have just been met with a smile and a laugh from Tim. Now he knows that he could've joked about it and not been seen as nagging or tiresome. Now that it's too late, Martin knows that Tim likely would've seen the teasing as just another sign of affection along with the tea itself. 

It wasn’t that they hadn’t joked around. Tim had seemed to understand better than pretty much anyone before how Martin sometimes didn’t _get_ teasing, how he would worry that things said in jest were truly meant. His jokes weren’t hurtful, if sometimes a bit obtuse, and they were always followed up with some comforting words. Never patronizing or demeaning, just little things that reminded Martin that he was wanted around, like an invitation to get drinks with him and Sasha, or an over the top speech about how the archives would crumble without Martin as a thank you for some small favor.

After Prentiss things had... things had changed. At first there were still jokes, if half hearted ones, and small tight smiles. Their interactions had slowly become shorter and more clipped, until the most they spoke was a quick thank you from Tim for a cup of tea, or a brief argument over what to do about Jon. 

In the months before the Unknowing, Tim had stopped drinking the tea Martin left for him. Martin had not stopped bringing him tea. The cup he'd placed on Tim’s desk the night before they left for Great Yarmouth had been empty the next day. Martin tries not to let himself think of it as a goodbye.

* * *

They end up in Glasgow, breaking into a flat in the city centre that Jon had Seen was safe. It’s lovely — big windows, hardwood floors, lots of space. So much space in fact, that Martin wouldn’t even have considered it if Jon hadn’t deemed it safe. Too many places for things to hide. It’s the kind of flat pre-apocalypse Martin had never dreamed of being able to afford, but he supposes that if there’s one thing the end of the world is good for it’s destroying the housing market. The once clean countertops are covered in dust and dirt that they keep from touching as a precaution. The second floor has holes in the ceiling, shaped and arrayed horribly like spiders' legs. There are scattered papers and trinkets on the floor, signs of people fleeing quickly, of not knowing what to take.

They don’t bother with either of the bedrooms, choosing instead to pull all the blankets that are left in the house into the living room with them. It’s better this way — more centralized, closer to the exits. Less isolating. And so they silently build a soft nest in the middle of the floor to set up their sleeping bag in. 

They’re silent a lot of the time now. Jon finds it easier to keep the Knowing from overwhelming him when he doesn’t have to talk, and it’s usually safer for Martin to stay silent as well. There are things listening besides the tape recorders now. There’s _also_ the fact that it leaves the tapes that still pop up nothing to record, something that Martin feels indifferent about and which makes Jon a vicious kind of satisfied. At any rate, they’ve become adept at reading each other now, interpreting looks and gestures, inventing some rudimentary signs. 

They weren’t half bad at it from the off. Jon, despite the blindfold, is able to Know, and Martin has been interpreting Jon’s body language and expressions for years now. This is simply a heightened mode of their normal operating system. One made for the new world of tension and fear that they live in.

Now though, in this once-lovely flat, curled up in a pile of blankets, Martin begins to relax. Not fully, never fully now, but he’s got Jon’s head in his lap and there’s, if not exactly a smile, then a more peaceful expression around his lips than Martin has seen in some time. Today had been okay. Good even. They’d had a brief encounter with the Vast this morning, the sky expanding and consuming and engulfing them, but he’d held Jon’s hand, and Jon had Seen the earth, and they’d gone off from it relatively unharmed if with a bit of vertigo. Then there’d been an avatar of the Dark, but he’d been new, and easy to get around, and hadn’t held them up too much from their goal of getting to Glasgow that night. 

That is Martin’s new definition of a good day. A day that leaves them unharmed, unimpeded, relatively safe. It’s honestly high standards for this new world. At least he can say he hasn’t compromised his personal integrity. (He gave up on personal integrity when he gave in and opened up the sixth tin of peaches in four days while trapped in his apartment so long ago now).

He’s got his hand in Jon’s hair, some of the tension draining from his shoulders, when he spots something on the desk by the big front windows. Gently he shifts Jon off his lap onto a throw pillow, ignoring his exhale of discomfort, and gets up for a closer look.

“Is something wrong?”

Jon’s voice is coloured with concern, slightly hoarse from disuse.

It still makes Martin smile.

“No, nothing’s wrong, I just thought I saw- ha!”

“What is it? Martin!?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine Jon it's just. There's a Crosley here.” And if Martin is a bit sheepish so be it. He's _missed_ listening to music, he's desperately hoping there are some records still here intact, and if Jon wants to tease him about his “retro aesthetic” well. Maybe Martin’s missed that too.

He pokes around the desk for a minute before he finds a small stack of records to one side. They look as though they’ve been kicked across the room, with many of them cracked and shattered. He finds one though, that’s still intact. It seems from the torn cover to be a compilation of great piano concertos. Martin had been hoping for something more along the lines of Bruce Springsteen, but at this point he’ll take what he can get.

The player is set up, the record set down, the batteries still seem to be working. Martin sets the record playing. According to the back of the cover, the first piece on the record seems to be Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2. It starts off, and it’s darker and sadder than Martin would’ve liked, but then the strings come in, and he turns round and Jon... Jon is standing, arms outstretched. What can Martin do but take his hands?

It’s not dancing music, that’s for sure. That doesn’t stop them from swaying back and forth, in something between a dance and a hug. They’re not really in time to anything, and again, it’s not dancing music, but it doesn’t really matter.

“I always preferred Shostakovich,” Jon says suddenly, and Martin laughs.

“Have strong opinions on classical Russian composers do you?”

“Well, Glinka really does nothing for me, and the Moguchaya Kuchka, while _important_ I suppose, are all rather awful. Tchaikovsky is good if a bit tiresome after a time, though _Eugene Onegin_ is brilliant. Prokofiev and Rachmaninov are both good, and I do enjoy them, but Shostakovich just has something...”

“Something?”. Martin is not laughing. He isn’t. It’s just that, well of course Jon does in fact have strong opinions on classical Russian composers. He shouldn’t even be surprised.

“His music is just nice and... it’s nice and _clangy_.” And here Martin does laugh.

“ _Clangy?_ Is that a technical term?”

“Oh shut up Martin,” but Jon is really smiling now and his voice is full of a fondness that makes him ache.

There’s a brief pause. The music’s gotten lighter now. Jon’s head is resting on his shoulder, his hair tickling Martin’s neck.

“Shostakovich wrote one of my favourite pieces you know.”

“Hmm?”

“Jazz Suite, Waltz No. 2. Not the most obscure favourite but that doesn’t matter much.”

“I’d love to hear it sometime”

“You’d probably recognize it. It really is well known.”

“I’d still like to listen to it. With you.”

Jon lifts his head off of Martin’s shoulder and ends their facsimile of a dance by pulling him into a hug. “We’ll listen to it together. We can even dance to it. Soon.”

“Soon.” and Martin presses his lips to Jon’s, as the faint strains of piano filter through in the background.

* * *

Martin had originally learned how Melanie took her tea as an apology.

He’d known that he and Tim had been a bit... well _rude_ does seem to fit, even if it doesn’t quite hit all the marks. Martin will maintain that they did have their reasons but still. They shouldn’t have taken it out on Melanie.

It was after she’d come asking him about Jude Perry that he’d gone into the breakroom to make her a cup. She was in this mess now, just as much as he and Tim and, and Jon were so. The very least Martin could do was make her a cup of tea. 

He’d done a standard cup of Earl Grey, black, and brought it out to her. She’d looked a bit confused at first, but then he’d apologized, said he didn’t know how she took it but that he could get her some milk and sugar if she liked. She'd somehow managed to look both annoyed and pleased at that. Martin sort of suspected that she was annoyed at _being_ pleased. Still, she’d mumbled out a thank you and Martin had retreated to his desk.

He’d been watching, when she’d pulled fumbled around in her pockets for a paper sugar packet and dumped it into her mug. From then on he’d experimented, adding various amounts of sugar until one day Melanie didn’t either go searching for a packet or screw up her face in distaste.

Dark and strong, steeped for at least five and a half minutes, and with a healthy spoonful of sugar added. It seemed to fit her, Martin had thought. He’d made her tea over and over as the months went by until he couldn’t anymore, for fear of it being thrown back in his face. In fact, he’d made it for her a bit beyond that point. Partly it was a kind of extended apology. Partly because, though he was ashamed to admit it, he had started thinking of her as something to be appeased, where even a slight change in routine could cause danger.

Now, when Martin thinks of Melanie he thinks of her as safe, curled up with Georgie, if not devoid of anger at least not consumed by it. He makes her a cup of tea in his head, and imagines a world where they had the time and the circumstances to maybe become friends, a world in which he knows Georgie’s tea preferences as well, a world where perhaps they all get along. It feels ridiculous most of the time, like how thinking of the sky being a different colour than blue used to feel. He continues making Melanie’s cup of tea anyway.

* * *

It’s the Slaughter that gets them this time.

Usually they can avoid the worst of the entities pretty well, relying on Jon’s Sight and the general lack of interest most avatars have in trying to engage the Archivist in a fight. This time though they’d just been pushed East to avoid a patch of the Lonely, exhausted after having fled the Boots in Kilmarnock they’d been holed up in after a group of Hunters began to approach, and it had been a simple matter of not paying attention.

It had happened as they had been slowly moving along what at one time must have been a picturesque country road, Jon signing that there was a town nearby and as far as he could See it should be safe there, when Martin had felt a stinging in his shoulder. He’d seen Jon turn quickly, shouting something out and racing towards something, blindfold torn off. Then, rapidly, the stinging had turned to a deep, piercing heat, and then Jon had reappeared and he’d seen his mouth moving, his hands cupping Martin’s cheeks, and wasn’t it so odd that this had to be the most words Jon had said in a long while and Martin couldn’t hear any of them, and then things were incredibly fuzzy for a bit, and then there was nothing but dark.

He’d woken up on a sofa in a house that looked like the late eighties had come and decided that they were setting up shop here, thank you very much, and that they would leave only once they were quite ready to. Jon, who had been puttering around with something on the coffee table beside him, had immediately gone to Martin once he’d woken, pushing some painkillers towards him. 

Martin is staring at Jon now as he pokes around the room they’re in, looking for another blanket. The wound in his shoulder has been cleaned and bandaged, and according to Jon they should be safe here for a little while at least, and he isn’t even in that much _pain_ after taking whatever the pills Jon had found had been which means the fact that Martin feels like he’s about to cry is _ridiculous_ because nothing specific is even _wrong_ right now and he just needs to _pull himself together_.

But he can’t stop thinking about the terrible draining siren call of the mass of Lonely they’d been so near earlier, or the sharp heat of the knife entering his shoulder, or how much harder this is going to make everything that already was hard, or the terrified look on Jon’s face as Martin had slipped from consciousness earlier. And then suddenly despite all his efforts to the contrary there are tears running down his cheeks.

Jon is there in a second, panicked hands tracing over Martin’s body, to his shoulder and his chest and his cheeks, searching for whatever is wrong, and Martin can't find the words to tell him that it’s nothing.

“I-I’m alright, Jon. There’s nothing wrong I just—” but Martin cuts himself off with another sob forcing its way out of his throat.

“Obviously it’s not nothing.” It’s unbearably soft, and hearing Jon’s slightly scratchy underused voice sends Martin into another fit of sobs.

“Okay ah- can you just squeeze my hand Martin? J-Just once for yes, twice for no?” and now Jon’s hand is in his, and he can feel the roughness of scar tissue, the writer’s callus on his middle finger, grounding him in this moment, here, with Jon.

One squeeze.

“Okay that’s great, th-that’s great you’re doing well Martin I just- ah is it your shoulder?”

Two squeezes.

“Good, alright i-is it the Lonely?”

Two squeezes again, perhaps a bit fainter this time.

“Is... is it anything I’ve done?”

Two squeezes, fast and tight this time.

“Okay... um I. Huh. I’m sorry Martin, you know I’ve never been very good with, well, with. Words. And things. Ah can I... can I hold you?”

One squeeze that doesn’t let up.

Jon pulls himself up onto the couch beside Martin. It isn’t comfortable, what with Jon being so exceedingly careful of Martin’s shoulder that he flinches everytime he so much as shifts his weight, and because the couch was certainly not made for two fully grown men to lie down side by side on it, not to mention the horrible crinkle of the plastic cover that encases the whole thing underneath them and the blanket Jon had put down on top of it so that Martin wouldn’t have to lie against the sticky plastic. But Jon is small enough to be able to curl up into Martin to make the most of the couch’s limited surface area, and he delicately places an arm over him (still being incredibly careful), and lets Martin cry into him, asking no more questions, just being there.

And Martin knows how hard this must be for Jon, to be here and worried and scared and still holding himself back from asking why for Martin’s sake, so that Martin can have a cry that there isn’t even any real reason for. It’s silly, there isn't even anything wrong, they’re safe and Jon is okay so he just needs to _stop crying_. He should just stop, he should, but no matter how hard he thinks that it just seems to make him cry harder. 

When his eyes are finally at least somewhat dry he manages to pull both himself and Jon up into sitting positions on the couch. Jon is still holding his hand, a warm presence at Martin’s side, grounding him in the present.

“I’m okay, I’m sorry, I don’t know...” he cuts himself off, unsure of how to continue.

“Martin,” Jon says, placing the hand that isn’t in Martin’s on his knee “you’re not okay.”

“I’m fine Jon! I’m fine, because there isn’t anything wrong, and you’re okay, and we’re safe and I’m _fine_ , I just. I just don’t know why I’m crying.” And with that Martin starts trying to wipe away the few tears that have leaked out since they sat up with his free hand, pushing hard against his eyes as if he can force them back in with enough will power. His throats feels tight and hot, like there's something stuck inside it, and he wants to move on from this little breakdown but it won't let him.

“You just woke up in a strange place, after having been stabbed, and you’ve been having to traverse a post apocalyptic version of the world for the past few weeks. None of that is fine, or normal, and you don’t need to be okay with it Martin. Certainly, c-certainly not with me.” and now Jon looks really, properly miserable and worried and Martin just needs to _pull himself together goddammit_. 

“Jon, none of this is your fault. You didn’t want any of this.”

Jon tilts his head at this, face turned towards Martin’s, and then says “This isn’t about me.”

“I’m not sur-”

“This is about you Martin. I’m okay right now. Relatively. And you’re not. I want to talk about what’s upsetting you.” 

And Jon is so earnest, even while laying things out so bare, in such a straightforward tone.

“I-I really don’t know. Everything was just... it was like all of a sudden it was too much and- I just need to pull myself together I- is there anything I can do? I know I can't do much with the shoulder and all, but I can do inventory?”

“Martin.”

“Maybe you could look for some food while I do that, I think we’re okay for a little while longer but if there are any non-perishables-”

“Martin.”

“And maybe medical supplies too, we’ll probably need to restock after this and-”

“Martin. _Please_. Just talk to me.”

“I-I don’t know Jon, I don’t. It’s nothing. _There’s nothing wrong_ , I just. Can’t seem to stop, and it doesn’t even make _sense_ -”

“I think you’ll find that I established a plethora of reasons as to why you absolutely have the right to be crying right now, and even if there _weren't_ any reasons it would still be okay that you’re crying.” Jon says, a note in his voice that seems to dare anyone to disagree with him, the same one that he used to use when someone would question his research, before they all got sent down to the archives and the world as they knew it ended. “Just. Just try? For me, Martin, just try and talk about h-how you’re feeling, if you can. It, I don’t care if it’s coherent or, or if you ramble or anything I just. I just don’t want you to try and handle this on your own.” And his voice is softer on these words, but still filled with determination.

And then it’s like something in Martin cracks open, and he’s letting it all out, all the things that had made everything too much, and Jon stays there, and listens to him, and when he’s done listing everything, from his fears about his shoulder hindering them now, to the bigger worries about what they’ll do when they reach London, to the little things like how he misses having a place to return to each night and the smell of his favourite detergent, Jon is still there. He sits, and listens, and when Martin is done Jon stays, and holds him, and a little while later they eat some uncorrupted trail mix that Jon had found in the kitchen of the little house, and even laugh about something ridiculous, and then they go to sleep on the couch, curled into each other as they were earlier, and Jon is there, and in spite of everything they’re together, and even if things aren’t okay, they are for now.

* * *

The first cup of tea Martin had made in the Archives had been for Sasha.

He’d asked how she took it and she’d smiled brightly at him, told him he didn’t need to do that, that she liked jasmine with just a dash of honey, and thank you so much Martin you’re a lifesaver, I couldn’t get through the day without this.

Martin hadn’t ever made tea for Sasha because Sasha didn’t like tea. Sasha always came in with a cup of coffee she picked up on her way into work and smiled when Martin put on the ancient coffee maker so she could have a second cup if she liked.

Everytime Martin made tea for the group of them Sasha had made fun of Tim for how he took his, taking her own mug of Earl Grey, no sugar, dash of milk in hand as she joked about how if Tim really hated his job that much he could just quit, no need to cause a white sugar induced heart attack.

Martin doesn’t remember how Sasha took her tea.

He doesn’t remember but he still makes up a cup for her in his head, varying the formula each time. It never feels quite right, but he doesn’t stop.

* * *

“We’re going to get a cat.”

They’re walking hand in hand along a country road, somewhere in Cumbria, or maybe Lancashire by now. Martin thinks they were nearing the border. That’s one thing about the apocalypse he hadn’t been prepared for, the endless, boring walking with little sense of where you are. He’s seen more formerly picturesque back ways and little side roads in the past few weeks than in the first thirty years of his life put together. It likely would’ve been nice, if there weren’t various eldritch horrors around making each beautiful scenic route a potential death trap, but still. One can’t live off of trees alone.

So Martin breaks up the walks with talking, while Jon listens intently. He rarely speaks, but instead turns his face towards Martin’s, squeezes his hand, lets out soft noises of acknowledgement. Usually Jon saves his words for whenever they stop to rest, being more easily able to hold back the Knowing while they stay in one place. Today, Martin’s been rambling about what they’re going to do when this is all over, a ridiculously hopeful pipe dream, but a distracting one. And if Jon is up for speaking today, Martin certainly isn’t going to stop him just because what he’s been saying has been wildly fanciful.

“Oh we are, are we? Do I get any say in the matter?” Martin teases.

Jon’s cheeks grow darker, and he turns his head away. It’s really unbearably sweet.

“Of course you get a say in the matter Martin, I just- if you don’t want a cat obviously we don’t have to get one but-” and Martin’s laughing.

“I’m just giving you a hard time Jon. I’d love to have a cat.”

“Oh thank god. For a minute there I was worried that you were going to say you didn’t like them.”

“I’m offended that you would ever believe that I wouldn’t like cats. They’re _cats_ Jon.”

“ _It was just for a moment and_ \- it doesn’t matter, it’s sorted, we’ll get a cat.” Jon huffs out a breath and turns his face towards Martin’s “Do you have any preference as to what type of cat? Since apparently I have not been giving enough consideration to your opinion in this process.”

Martin puts on his most business-like voice. “Thank you dear. It’s important that we share things like this, since we are in a mutually beneficial partnership operating on a democratic basis and each party must therefore have equal bargaining power when it comes to companion animal selection.”

There’s silence for a moment, and then they both burst into laughter.

“Good lord Martin that was _awful_.”

“That was simply the product of many years experience of writing incomprehensible admin emails. I got access to so many records while doing research by just putting enough complicated words in my emails so that it was easier to just give me what I wanted than to verify my credentials.”

“ _You_ can be the one to deal with the phone company then. You know all their tricks.” 

“Alright. And you can get the mail in the morning, Mr Early Riser. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Now back to the subject of our future cat. I suppose the type of cat doesn’t matter much to me, not as long as we get on with them. If we show up to the RSPCA and really fall in love with a white cat I’m not going to complain because I wanted a, a tabby or something.”

“Okay, but if the perfect cat could be any kind, which would you want it to be? A tabby?”

“Mmm, I like tabbys, but I’ve always been partial to black cats.”

Jon lets out a soft huff of laughter.

“Something funny?”

“No it’s just... I’ve always liked black cats too.”

He smiles at Jon, and there’s another moment of silence before he feels a tight squeeze of Jon’s hand in his, their signal for when Jon needs to stop talking and focus.

Martin starts up his rambling again, talking about how he’d like to live somewhere where they get real snow in the winter instead of the rainy slush of January in London, and they keep walking, hand in hand.

* * *

Basira likes mint tea with no milk or sugar, just searingly, blisteringly hot.

She tells him this right away when he asks her, just after their meeting with Elias where she was... hired? Taken prisoner? It might be both. At any rate, they just got proof that their boss is evil, that the Institute was built to serve some eldritch fear entity, and _Jon is back_. Tea is warranted.

He gives her her cup when it’s ready, and she immediately takes a sip and thanks him. Martin isn’t entirely sure how she managed to drink it without giving herself third degree burns on the inside of her mouth, but she seems satisfied and that’s really all he can hope for.

Martin keeps making her blisteringly hot cups of tea and Basira keeps drinking them. She’d really taken well to being stuck there, better than any of them certainly. He admired it, in a way, her ability to adapt, to deal, to be direct. He wished _he_ had some more of those qualities. If circumstances were different, he would’ve liked to befriend her, get to talk to her like Jon had, get in on the dry sense of humour he saw in her. As it was, he just kept making her her tea, and she kept drinking it, and that was that.

After the Unknowing, she stopped drinking the tea. Or, more accurately, she would forget to drink her tea until it was cold, chug down half of it in one go, and then proceed to ignore the other half of it until she went to dump out the mug. She’d make terrible coffee in the awful old coffee maker, and forget about that too. Martin didn’t bring it up. He understood past rituals losing meaning. He understood why sometimes Basira would stare into the distance looking for someone who wasn’t there. He understood why she threw herself into work, and why she didn’t read for pleasure anymore.

When he stopped making tea, she didn’t bring it up. When he said he was going to work for Peter, she just gave him a tight nod.

Martin likes to think she understood too.

* * *

It’s a village a bit south of Birmingham that makes Jon break.

He’s been getting shakier as they get further south, taking the evidence of the destruction the entities have reigned down harder as the days go by. He speaks less and less to Martin, giving a little smile when Martin squeezes his hand and returning gestures of affection, but is otherwise pensive and sad, the fact that all the suffering of the world is being poured through him becoming increasingly apparent.

They’ve seen so many terrible things. This town is somehow worse than all of them.

The smell hits them before they get to it. It’s like the rancid, sickly sweet, almost heady scent of too ripe fruit rotting on the ground mixed with the now familiar metallic odor of blood. Jon’s signaled that there isn’t any danger ahead as far as he can tell, and so they keep going despite the smell. It’s already taken so long to get this far, and they don’t want to go more off course than they need to. 

The road in leads them past a few big warehouses, and that’s when they begin to see the carnage. There are hands scattered around the front of one of them, turned a sickly yellow shade with parts of the skin being covered in sores so deep that Martin can see pale bone amidst the rancid flesh. More and more of various limbs in similar states line the roadway as they keep walking. It is undeniably horrifying, but they have seen worse. They have seen worse. They push on.

Once they reach the beginnings of the town proper full bodies begin to appear. Their skin looks the same as the hands, but many of them have violent wounds, missing limbs, evidence of violence inflicted on each other. They’re arranged oddly, like someone had moved them after their deaths into a pattern that Martin can’t make out, but each one has been left sitting up and staring blankly. Every single corpses’ eyes are intact, and wide open.

The closer to the centre of the town they go the more the bodies become distorted. Some are obviously victims of whatever Corruption-sent disease had been inflicted on the town, bodies barely recognizable as human through the sores and the abcesses and the yellowed, bulging, flaking skin, the most identifiable feature being their still staring eyes. Others seem to have died while halfway to subcomming to the disease, and are covered in wounds and marks. Martin remembers Adelard Dekker’s final letter and pulls himself a bit closer to Jon. Each and every body looks like it was moved after death into it’s terrible never ending stare, forming some design too big for anyone down here to see.

It’s when they pass the school that Jon really begins to shake. All Martin can do is hold his hand tighter.

Once they near the centre of the town the number of bodies increases until it’s practically a sea of them. These ones are close together, each body touching the next, laying side by side, forming a long winding road of dead. All still staring, bodies still rotting and wounded and grotesque. But these ones are covered completely in shining blood, still wet somehow even though they can’t have died recently, a bright red ribbon of decaying, putrefying shells lining the centre of town. In the middle are all the most rotted corpses, piled in a circle, turned black with corruption. The smell is overpowering. There are hundreds of eyes staring.

If Martin wasn’t in shock he’s sure he would be panicking. It’s just too terrible to process, the sheer state of destruction in this little village. He’d read statements like this, he’d investigated them, hell he’d been living through the apocalypse. None of it compares to the sight of such sheer concentrated carnage. 

Martin is torn out of his horrified reverie by the sound of Jon laughing. The sound of it is like someone has just pressed a white hot poker into freezing flesh. It’s a sound he hasn’t heard since the day he found Jon unconscious on the floor of the safehouse, since their brief period of happiness was torn away.

“It’s an _eye_ Martin.” he says hysterically, like it’s a joke he’s just been clued in on. “The veined sclera, the red iris, the pupil. It’s an _eye_.” and Martin now realizes the significance of the horribly contorted, organized bodies.

“When it first appeared, the eye in the sky, they were all so scared. And they tried to comfort each other, but then they started to know things. All the worst moments of their family members, their friends, their neighbours, placed right into their minds just as they tried to connect to each other. When the Corruption slipped in it was easy for things to boil over. After all, they were so on edge already, being watched all the time, and there’s nothing like a plague to get accusations flying. When the Slaughter arrived it barely had to do any work to get them to tear each other apart. And when it was all over, the last one left standing used her remaining strength to organize everyone into this tribute. It didn’t matter that her left arm was only hanging on by a thin strand of muscle, or that her skin was near to peeling off with disease. She went about her work, and she was so happy, and so, so afraid while doing it. And then she died, in pain and alone, and scared. And I _feel it_. All of it.” With that Jon collapses onto the ground in those terrible half laughs half sobs, hands going up to the blindfold. Martin begs with him to come back, shakes him, pleads with him not to leave him alone. None of it makes a difference.

It must be at least ten minutes later that Martin realizes they need to get out of here. Jon might not have sensed any danger but being in this place... is bad. It’s bad and it won’t get better until they get out. With barely acknowledged tears in his eyes Martin picks up Jon, who is just shaking now, letting out soft whimpers, and he begins to walk them both out. 

It takes ages, getting out of the little village, what with him having to carry Jon and avoid the bodies, and figure out the way. Finally Martin collapses at the side of the road, five minutes after seeing the last rotting limb, gently setting Jon down beside him. Immediately Jon curls into himself, still shaking harshly. Some dim corner of Martin’s brain reminds him about shock, how it can kill too, how they’re both probably suffering from it right now. He pulls Jon back towards him and wraps his jacket around them both, chin tucked atop Jon’s shaking head. They lie there like that, shivering on the side of the road in fear and loss and pain as the eye above them stares down.

One week after they stumbled out of that village and Jon hasn’t spoken a word since.

He keeps his head down, moves where Martin directs him to, eats when Martin hands him food, and is generally unresponsive otherwise. As they walk his hand rests limply in Martin’s. He has not cried since they’d gotten up off the side of the road and begun walking away from the carnage that was the remains of that village. He hasn’t done anything at all.

Three days in Martin had broken down and begged Jon to speak to him, to squeeze his hand, to do anything, to react in any way. Jon had continued to stare at the ground, unresponsive. Finally, Martin had lifted up the blindfold in a desperate attempt to get Jon to see him, to pull him back just as he had pulled Martin back out of the Lonely. Instead what he found were Jon’s eyes, glassy and unaware, with the formerly brown irises turned a deep blood red, just the same as how the bodies in the village must have looked from the sky.

Gently, Martin lowers the blindfold back down over Jon’s eyes and places a soft kiss on his forehead. Something about seeing Jon’s eyes like that has hardened the anger that had been simmering beneath the surface of his skin ever since he’d read Jonah Magnus’ crumpled statement in those first few terrible hours after the world ended. Martin begins to walk along the road again, continuing towards London, pulling Jon alongside him. He is going to fix this, and kill Magnus, and even if it won’t get Jon’s eyes to turn brown again at least he’s pretty sure it could get him to smile.

* * *

Martin had never learned how Daisy took her tea.

Before the Unknowing, a combination of fear that she’d just kill him for asking, her frequent absence, and a general lack of desire to do anything nice for her had solidly killed any possibility of adding her into the tea run.

After the Unknowing she was gone, and then Martin was gone, and then everything fell apart.

Martin still isn’t sure that he’d really like to make a cup of tea for Daisy. The memories of harsh interrogation, her enjoyment at the pain of others, the still visible scar on Jon’s neck all keep him from feeling like giving a cup of tea to Daisy would be enjoyable for either party. 

Jon knew a different Daisy though. When they first began working in the archives _too forgiving_ was not a flaw Martin would have proscribed to Jon, but the way he spoke of Daisy in those three weeks in her safehouse, voice full of sorrow and regret, it made Martin want stare into his eyes and make him understand _she tried to kill you, why have you forgiven her for that, I can’t forgive her for that._

Martin knows, though, that there is a different Daisy to the one he knew. Or, more accurately, that there is more to Daisy than the parts he saw. Jon tells him stories of the two of them in the days after escaping the Buried, of getting drunk off of straight gin on the floor of his office, of listening to The Archers together, of simply sitting in silence with another person who understood.

During these stories he pushes down the instinct to apologize, to regret not being the one who was there for Jon when he needed him. It isn’t a healthy instinct, he knows, just self punishing, the part of him that constantly tells him that things are his fault, that he wasn’t good enough. Instead he tries to be grateful that while he couldn’t be there for Jon, someone else was. He tries to let the memories he has of Daisy rest side by side with the stories Jon tells him, with the doodling that had to be hers that he’d seen in the notebook Jon had grabbed to bring with them, with the old bike with a _wicker basket_ of all things that they’d found in her safehouse. 

He asks Jon how she took her tea. He tells him weak, with one sugar and a dash of milk. Martin makes note of it. He may not ever have the chance to make it for her really, but occasionally when he feels the need to make one of his pretend cups of tea, he’ll make one in a plain mug, weak black tea with a dash of milk and one sugar.

* * *

They’re back in the Institute for what Martin knows is the last time. No matter how this all ends, they will not be returning to this place of files and dust and other people's fear again. 

They have a rough plan, slapped together with Melanie, Georgie, and Basira upon their arrival in London, formed as they related what they knew to each other. Basira had described what she had seen traversing the London area for a few weeks before meeting up with Georgie and Melanie. They had in turn explained the safehouse they’d managed to create in Smirke’s tunnels, which apparently spread underneath the British Museum as well. Martin learns that these ones are far less treacherous than those below the Institute, uncorrupted by the spiral or the various avatars the stronghold of the Eye had attracted. 

(He tries not to think of what Jon might say right now, of the many times he’d told Martin his exact feelings on the British Museum. He tries not to think about how Jon had said they should go together one day, if only so that he could point out the most egregious examples of colonialism still at work. He tries not to think about the look on Jon’s face as he admits, incredibly reluctantly, that since the artefacts are there and he isn’t a repatriation lawyer and can’t exactly _do_ anything about it, that it might be nice to go see them. Sometimes. Martin tries not to think of these things, and he fails, but he is pretty sure no one notices so it doesn’t matter too much anyway.)

He’d explained quickly to them what had happened with that final statement, their travels south of the past few months, why Jon... how Jon got to be in his current state. He’s met with a grim nod from Basira during his description of the state that the rest of the country is in, an emphatic “What the _fuck_ ” from Melanie as he relates Magnus’ statement, and an almost absent look of loss from Georgie as she stares at Jon’s blank face. (She asked him, tentatively, like someone approaching a wounded animal, if he was sure about bringing Jon with them to the Institute. At his yes, she’d just nodded, that same look covering her face like a shroud.)

As they prepare to leave, he works up the courage to approach Basira, looking just as Georgie must have when she approached him a few minutes before. He quietly asks about Daisy. Basira simply says that one of the places she’d gone in those first few weeks was Epping Forest. That there were plenty of monsters there, but maybe a few less after her visit. He nods and doesn’t say anything at all.

Their plan is simple but straight forward. Georgie making her way through the tunnels towards the panopticon with a knife in hand, Melanie and Basira coming up into the archives through the tunnels and preparing to set them ablaze. Martin, his own knife in one hand, Jon’s hand in the other, confronting Magnus head on.

It goes just about as badly for Martin as it can.

Jonah is waiting for him, and there’s no time to prepare as awful, unthinkable knowledge is pushed into his head. He is shown how a university student was murdered in the park he used to play in as a child and what it felt like when the knife went into her throat, he sees how his primary school maths teacher was devoured by the Spiral a few weeks ago, he learns exactly how painful it is to die of alcoholism and of how it took his father exactly five years eight months and three days after leaving them to succumb to it fully. And again, he feels the full weight of what his mother felt when she looked upon her son’s face.

And then, suddenly, it’s all gone. His mind feels almost terribly quiet with the sudden absence of other people’s thoughts, and his attempts to understand what just happened are like trying to think through cotton balls. At some point he registers a tightness around his left hand. A moment after that he remembers that that is the hand that held Jon’s hand. And a moment after that Martin finally manages to open his eyes and is met with Jon’s brown irises staring back at him, awake and aware and full of love.

* * *

Martin still remembers how his mother took her tea.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget, not really. She had liked green tea, well steeped, with three drops of honey in it. He’d made that tea, green, well steeped, three drops of honey, thousands of times, enough times to have it ingrained in his muscle memory, for it to be an inextricable part of him.

She’d never thanked him for it. Never said that it was just right, or that he’d done well. But sometimes, when he’d place the tea in front of her, as she picked it up and felt the heat leaching through the walls of the mug, she would smile. Not at him, but into the tea itself. It had always been enough. He’d understood that that smile meant all the things she wasn’t saying. Or at least, it meant them to him.

(He remembers after his first few days in research, a coworker he now can’t remember the name of thanked him for making them a cup. He remembers feeling startled, off balance for a minute, and promptly pressing those feelings down. He remembers that it had hurt, somehow, the next time he’d made his mum a cup.)

During the end of the world Martin doesn't feel the need to make her tea much, not anymore.

* * *

It is exactly 6:18 pm on March 3rd 2019 when Jonah Magnus finally dies. His life ends with two knives in his chests, one in the old and one in the new. The archives of The Magnus Institute erupt into flame at the same time, thousands of records of other people's fear turning into nothing more than ash and smoke and flame. 

At 6:18 pm and ten seconds on March 3rd 2019, Jonathan Sims, The Archivist, collapses on the floor of The Magnus Institute, having just stabbed Jonah Magnus through the heart.

At 6:18 pm and twelve seconds, Martin Blackwood falls next to him.

“Jon? Jon please talk to me please I-”

“You have to do it Martin.” And suddenly Jon is pressing a bloody knife into his hands. “The Beholding is distracted right now, and I don’t think it’s watching me. This is our chance. I think it'll work, but only now.” Jon’s looking straight at Martin, his eyes seeming to drink in the sight of him.

“Martin I’m so sorry to ask you to do this, I’m so sorry but you have to okay? You have to. I’m sorry I left you, I’m sorry that I’m leaving you again but I’m not worth the world Martin. If you kill me I think it will end it. I-I’m the one tying them here.”

There is a second of tense silence as they stare at each other, and then, quietly but firmly, Martin speaks.

“You are worth it though.”

“What?”

“You are worth the world. To me. And I’m the person whose opinion matters right now.”

“Martin, I can’t.. I won’t be able to live with myself if you don’t do this.”

A beat, and then.

“I don’t want you to do it either.”

“Jon-”

“I don’t want to die, I don’t want to have to give myself up to save the world, I don’t want to leave you but I _have to,_ Martin. And I... I don’t think I can do it myself.”

They’re both crying now, ugly sobbing that leaves Martin feeling breathless. 

“I, Jon I love you.”

“I love you so much. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Jon places his lips on Martin’s, and it’s a messy and desperate and terrified parody of a kiss, but they keep going, unwilling to stop, unwilling to let this end.

Finally Martin picks up the still bloody knife and looks into Jon’s eyes for one last time.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, but he already knows the answer.

“Of course.”

The apocalypse ends at 6:24 pm on March 3rd 2019, in the lobby of what was formerly The Magnus Institute, with Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims, and a dizzyingly sharp knife.

* * *

Learning how Jon liked his tea had required experimentation.

Martin had asked him, when they first started working in the archives, how he took it. Jon had responded with a curt “It doesn’t matter.” and then disappeared into his office for the next eight hours. 

At the time Martin had thought he was being intentionally difficult and it had sparked in him a contrary little desire to get Jon’s tea absolutely perfect, without any help from the man himself, just to show him that he could. Now, though there admittedly might have been a touch of misanthropy in Jon’s response, Martin thinks it far more likely that Jon simply hadn’t known how he liked his tea. He’d asked, one night in the safehouse, and Jon had responded that he honestly didn’t remember, but that no tea had ever tasted as good as what Martin made for him. He took this as confirmation.

It had taken several tries, no small number of undrunk mugs, and a disastrous experiment with herbal tea to get it right. Jon liked any kind of black tea, dark and with the barest dash of milk, and a half spoonful of honey instead of any sugar. This discovery had earned him short “Thank you”s, empty mugs, and the satisfaction of having done something well for his prickly, attractive, bastard of a boss.

Then, after being stuck in his apartment for two weeks, after having seen Jon be kind, after being given shelter in the archives, the tea became sort of... sort of a thank you. Jon became someone to _look after,_ someone Martin felt the need to check in on. Only more so after Prentiss’ attack on the archives, and Jon’s confession in the storage room (and him asking if Martin was a _ghost_ of all things), and how much worse he’d looked afterwards, coming back into work covered in scars filled with paranoia.

The times that Martin had kindly bullied Jon into getting lunch with him, the checks to make sure he left at night, and of course the cups of tea were all just ways to show Jon that someone cared. They had the side effect of exponentially increasing the strength of Martin’s feelings for Jon, so that by the time he’d fled the archives Martin ached with missing him, with worrying about if he was okay.

He kept getting honey for the cupboard in the break room, even though no one was using it up. He justified it, telling himself that they’d have a good stockpile for when Jon came back and was in the archives again (and if a part of him felt that buying the honey meant Jon had to come back well. It wasn’t hurting anyone). 

And then Jon did come back, but not really because he was gone all the time, and he always looked so tired, and sad, and like he desperately needed someone to give him a cup of tea but felt it more likely that he would get one thrown in his face. There were a few rare days when he was in, and Martin was able to bring him tea, and sometimes they could even go out to lunch, like they had before, and even if Jon stared at the doors and other patrons nervously, he also looked at _Martin_ and smiled a bit sadly and that was more than enough.

It had felt almost like they were inching towards something, terribly slowly yes, held back by the weight of their own doubts and fears, yes, but still moving incrementally along and then. And then Jon left and was gone but not even fully because he was _there_ just. Not awake. Not fully alive even. And Tim and Daisy were gone, and Basira was miserable which had made her act hard, and Melanie was angry, so so angry all the time and Peter Lukas of all people was trying to make a deal with him and Jon still hadn’t woken up, and it all piled up more and more until Martin gave in because he just couldn’t care anymore.

That was when he had first started making the imaginary cups of tea in his head. Over and over, dark black tea, tiny dash of milk, half a spoon of honey. And when Jon woke up, and returned to the Institute looking awful and sad and lonely, Martin made him imaginary cups of tea. It was selfish, Martin knew, and it didn’t even help comfort Jon, but it did make Martin feel more lonely and he supposed that _was_ helping, in its own way.

Once they arrived at Daisy’s safehouse, the first thing Martin had done was put on the kettle. (Well the first thing he’d done had been check to make sure there were’t any corpses or murder weapons around. And then he’d taken advantage of an opportune moment to kiss Jon, because that was something he could _do_ now, and he’d be damned if he let any opportunities slip by. But the kettle had come right after.) He’d found one mug and a small deep bowl to serve as cups as Jon sorted out the sheets in the bedroom, and he’d grabbed the box of Earl Grey they’d picked up at the train station and placed a bag in each. There was no milk or honey that night, but at last Martin got to give Jon a cup of tea again. And the way that Jon smiled at him as he passed him the mug, the way he said _thank you_ so softly, like they were in an illusion and speaking louder would break the magic, well. It was enough to make the sting of the past year feel a bit less painful in Martin’s chest.

* * *

Martin is glad that the apocalypse did not manage to ruin the highlands for him.

It’s a sunny day for once, and the light is warm on his skin. He’s glad that this little cottage they managed to find abandoned, both wonderfully similar and comfortingly different to the safehouse, has windows that let the sun in. (He was still right about the end of the world being good for destroying the housing market). It’s closer to a village than the safehouse was too, and Martin thinks that in a few days when he needs to go there to pick up some things at the co-op that the town reformed he might be able to convince Jon to come too. 

Another benefit of being closer to a village is that they can get internet reception here. The world came back online astonishingly fast after the apocalypse ended. But then, in general people were rebuilding fast. Martin wasn’t following it too closely, but Melanie and Georgie gave them updates sometimes when they called, on the state of things in London. Basira had less information than they did, having moved into Daisy’s old safehouse., but they told her she had to call them at least once a week or they would come to make sure she was okay themselves. She’d agreed only because she said that she never wanted to see their faces again. The calls aren’t exactly friendly, not yet, but they aren’t hostile either. Martin takes what he can get.

Currently, Martin can hear the faint voice of the screen reader coming in from the other room. Jon’s been doing better, getting used to not having either sight or Sight, but he still gets nervous at the thought of being around people who aren’t Martin. He still wakes up sometimes at night to find Jon trying to scratch at his eyes. Martin himself still jumps at small noises, and his hands shake at the sight of a too sharp knife blade. But they’ll work it out. They’ve got time now. 

“Martin! I have to show you something.” Comes Jon’s voice from the living room, and Martin goes with a smile on his face.

“Hmm?”

“Hold on let me just... okay and there!” And suddenly there’s music filtering out from the speakers of the computer. Martin isn’t an expert, but if he had to guess he’d say it was a waltz. Jon is standing, arms outstretched. And what can Martin do but take his hands?

Once they’re settled, with Jon’s hands on Martin’s waist and shoulder respectively, Jon begins to speak. “It’s... it’s Shostakovich. Jazz Suite, Waltz No. 2. I ah, I thought we could. Dance to it. Like we said we would.”

Jon looks and sounds so terribly earnest. It would almost hurt if it wasn’t so sweet.

“I would love to dance with you Jon. But you know, you didn’t do it properly.”

“What?”

“I believe you’re supposed to ask someone to dance before you practically drag them into a waltz.”

“I reached out to _you_ , you took my hands, I never drag- hmh. Mister Blackwood may I please have the honour of this dance?”

Martin lets out a soft huff of laughter under his breath. “You may, Mister Blackwood.”

They both smile at each other for a moment, and then—

“Do you know how to waltz?”

“No! I assumed you did, you’re the one who chose the song!”

“Well that doesn’t mean I know how to dance to it.”

“Apparently not.”

Then Jon is laughing, and Martin is too. “Come on we can just. Sway. Like we did before.”

They move side to side a bit, getting closer and closer as they do so.

“I like it. A lot, Jon.” 

“I’m glad Martin.”

“I love you. A lot, Jon.”

“I’m glad Martin”

“Hey!” but they’re both smiling.

“I love you. So much.”

They keep swaying until the song ends, and then the next one starts to play, and they keep on to that one too, just holding each other close, after the end of the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, you can find me on tumblr @lesbianaglaya


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